Kinetics of continuous hydrolysis of tallow in a multi‐layered flat‐plate immobilized‐lipase reactor

To investigate the feasibility of industrial hydrolysis of tallow in an immobilized‐lipase bioreactor, a pilot plant was operated continuously at one gram/min for more than one year. A new thin‐layer chromatography (TLC) method was employed for analysis of the composition of the product. Data were reduced by averaging, categorizing, and averaging again. The reduced data were used to calculate rates of the three individual reactions: hydrolysis of triacylglycerol (TG) to diacylglycerol (DG) and free fatty acid (FFA), hydrolysis of DG to monoacylglycerol (MG) and FFA, and hydrolysis of MG to glycerol and FFA. It was concluded that separation of mono‐ and diacylglycerol from FFA and triacylglycerol would be required to achieve a high concentration of FFA in the product.